Idris Elba has said he has been put off from ever playing James Bond due to the “disgusting” racist discourse that the speculation about him taking on the role triggered.
For a number of years, the Luther actor has been at the centre of rumours that he could be taking over as 007 after Daniel Craig’s departure from the franchise.
However, earlier this year, Idris firmly ruled himself out of the running, insisting: “You know, a lot of people talk about another character that begins with ‘J’ and ends with ‘B,’ but I’m not going to be that guy.”
Idris would have made history as the first ever Black actor to portray James Bond, and in a new interview, he opened up about how racist abuse made him not ever want to accept the part in the future.
Appearing on Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett’s SmartLess podcast, Idris described the idea of playing the iconic spy as “the pinnacle”.
However, he then added: “Those that weren’t happy about the idea made the whole thing disgusting and off-putting, because it became about race. It became about nonsense and I got the brunt of it.”
In 2019, Idris admitted he’d found the racist backlash to the idea of him playing James Bond “disheartening”.
“When you get people from a generational point of view going, ‘It can’t be.’ And it really turns out to be the color of my skin. And then if I get it and it didn’t work, or it did work, would it be because of the color of my skin? That’s a difficult position to put myself into when I don’t need to,” he told Vanity Fair.
Although James Bond seemingly isn’t on the cards for Idris, he is still perfectly busy with other projects.
His brand new Apple TV+ series Hijack began streaming earlier this week, in which he plays the lead role Sam, a talented business negotiator who must use his skills to broker a peaceful end to a hijacking of a flight from Dubai to London.
As it stands, the new James Bond star is yet to be announced.
Last month, Young Bond author Charlie Higson insisted that if an actor is reported in the media to be in consideration for the role, “you know that they’ve been rejected”.
Speaking to the PA News Agency, he elaborated: “Eon (Productions) who make the films play their cards very close to the chest and a lot of times they really surprise people… in particular, Daniel Craig, nobody had any idea at all that he might be Bond and if you’d been asked in advance, you’d have said, ‘Daniel Craig, James Bond, surely not’.
“But then he’s just so good in Casino Royale… any doubts you might have had immediately go out the window, so they’re pretty clever on that front and they will inevitably wait to make the announcement at the right time to get the maximum amount of publicity.”